Mueller Monday: Ex-Trump campaign advisers Papadopoulos, Manafort and Gates indicted

The first shoes have dropped in Robert S. Mueller III’s inves­ti­ga­tion:

Spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor Robert S. Mueller III on Mon­day revealed charges against three for­mer Trump cam­paign offi­cials — for­mer Trump cam­paign chair­man Paul Man­afort, his long­time busi­ness part­ner Rick Gates and for­mer Trump for­eign pol­i­cy advis­er George Papadopou­los — mark­ing the first crim­i­nal alle­ga­tions to come from probes into pos­si­ble Russ­ian influ­ence in U.S. polit­i­cal affairs.

Papadopou­los plead­ed guilty ear­li­er this month to mak­ing a false state­ment to FBI inves­ti­ga­tors who asked about his con­tacts with a for­eign­er who claimed to have high-lev­el Russ­ian con­nec­tions, and the agree­ment was unsealed Mon­day. Court doc­u­ments described exten­sive efforts Papadopou­los made to try to bro­ker con­nec­tions with Russ­ian offi­cials and arrange a meet­ing between them and the Trump cam­paign, though some emails show his offers were rebuffed.

High­light­ing is ours.

White House res­i­dent Don­ald Trump imme­di­ate­ly tried to deflect the news, angri­ly sug­gest­ing his oppo­nents should be the tar­get of any inves­ti­ga­tion, while also declar­ing, “there is no COLLUSION!” The more Trump makes such denials, though, the more he rein­forces the nar­ra­tive about poten­tial collusion.

It’s Don’t Think of An Ele­phant 101:

When we negate a frame, we evoke the frame.

Richard Nixon found that out the hard way. While under pres­sure to resign dur­ing the Water­gate scan­dal, Nixon addressed the nation on TV. He stood before the nation and said, “I am not a crook.” And every­body thought about him as a crook.

Here’s the begin­ning of The Wash­ing­ton Post’s sto­ry about that extra­or­di­nary state­ment, deliv­ered to a gath­er­ing of Asso­ci­at­ed Press edi­tors:

Declar­ing that “I am not a crook,” Pres­i­dent Nixon vig­or­ous­ly defend­ed his record in the Water­gate case tonight and said he had nev­er prof­it­ed from his pub­lic service.

“I have earned every cent. And in all of my years of pub­lic life I have nev­er obstruct­ed jus­tice,” Mr. Nixon said.

“Peo­ple have got to know whether or not their Pres­i­dent is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook. I’ve earned every­thing I’ve got.”

Man­afort and Gates are due to be arraigned in court today.

(UPDATE: They’ve pled not guilty to the charges, as expected.)

Man­afort, as men­tioned above in The Wash­ing­ton Post’s sto­ry, was the Trump cam­paign’s chair­man for a cru­cial chunk of 2016, while Gates was his deputy. Man­afort came aboard in March of 2016 (bring­ing Gates with him) and remained at the helm until being oust­ed in August of 2016.

Man­afort and Gates were hired by the Trump oper­a­tion months after Trump vowed to “sur­round myself only with the best and most seri­ous peo­ple,” in an August 2015 inter­view. “We want top of the line pro­fes­sion­als,” Trump claimed.

How about lying, mon­ey laun­der­ing criminals?

“You don’t see this sen­tence every morn­ing: The for­mer cam­paign chair­man of the pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States will be charged with a fed­er­al crime,” not­ed David Leon­hardt of The New York Times, who point­ed out that Trump is an incred­i­bly weak posi­tion over­all despite hav­ing a firm grip on the Repub­li­can Party.